Cultures in our Classroom - Pasifika

Kia ora bloggers!

This term we are looking at the cultures in our classroom. The past two weeks have been dedicated to looking at the Pasifika cultures; Tongan, Samoan, Niuean and Cook Islands Māori. We have been using dual language texts to explore the languages of these cultures during shared reading.

On the third day of reading our dual language stories we looked at the keywords that would help us order and sequence the events from the stories. We then matched these keywords with the Tongan and Samoan translations and the illustrations from the books. Next, we sequenced the story in English and then in Tongan and Samoan. We used the original matching activities to help us identify the keywords in the sentences.

We are so lucky that some of our classmates speak Samoan and Tongan and could read the stories to us and help us pronounce the new words we were learning (Thank you Renesmee, Xayvion, Utu and Line! 😃).

Here's some pictures of us working together to complete the tasks, as well as of our finished work. 

Shared book: Lavalava/'O Lavalava

Shared book: At the Airport/'I he Mala'e Vakapuna'

What languages can you speak? Do you do any activities like this in your class? We'd love to hear about them!